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Oxford Calculators

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy

Abstract

With Richard Swineshead’s Book of Calculations taken as its characteristic product, the “Oxford Calculators” were a group of thinkers at Oxford University in the mid-fourteenth century, most but not all of whom were associated with Merton College, for which reason they were earlier called “the Merton School,” and credited with contributions to astronomy and to the development of mathematical physics. The particularly “calculatory” features of the work of this group seem to have resulted from their connection to undergraduate disputations in the Faculty of Arts, particularly those devoted to the solution of so-called sophismata.

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Bibliography

Primary Sources

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Edith D. Sylla

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  1. Edith D. Sylla
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Henrik Lagerlund

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Sylla, E.D. (2011). Oxford Calculators. In: Lagerlund, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9729-4_366

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9729-4_366

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-9728-7

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